yo ho ho and a ride on the ferris wheel

Today was a big day. It can pretty much be summed up with this image:

Unfortunately we weren't riding with Woody and the three-eyed alien monster, but you get the point. I took 6-year old Laura to the big kahuna of toy meccas: the Toys 'R Us in Times Square, the toy store so big it has a goddamn Ferris Wheel in the entrance.

I've wondered often since starting my babysitting job what it must be like to be children growing up in this city, with things like the Toys 'R Us Ferris Wheel and the Naked Cowboy (whom we saw later) within walking distance of home. Sometimes when walking around with Laura she has the same reaction I did when I first came to New York in 2nd grade-- pointing out the moving billboards in Times Square, the general appeal of the Ferris Wheel-- but other times, like when a woman completely lost her mind and began screaming at the bus driver one day, her blase attitude is totally disarming.

Happily, today wasn't really one of those days. The giant anamatronic dinosaur was a thrill, as were the Lego statues of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, complete with King Kong. I wondered occasionally if we could get confused for the tourist families who usually pack the place, but happily, to children it doesn't matter. Sometimes its nice to forget to care about fitting in once in a while.

While we were on the Ferris Wheel (the My Little Pony car, in case you were wondering), we had a bird's-eye view of the store's full line of merchandise, which I'm sure is the intention. We saw the Lego Jack Sparrow, the setup for the forthcoming Shrek section, the giant wall-o'-Spiderman that brought us there to begin with. This 6-year old has never seen Pirates of the Caribbean or Spiderman for that matter, but she recognized all the characters instantly. Her 2 1/2 year old sister, who wasn't even born when Spiderman 2 came out, also recognizes the webslinger.

In my job I think a lot about how Hollywood affects its chosen audiences-- reading the Variety box office breakdowns has become a lot of fun, actually-- and seeing it happen with these kids is sometimes jarring. Is it a problem that Laura knows who Jack Sparrow is but not Johnny Depp? The film critic in me wants to scream "No! Show her Edward Scissorhands! And possibly also photos of Johnny Depp during the Viper Room era," but the pop-culture lover in me who already has tickets to an IMAX screening of Spiderman 3 thinks, well, what's the big deal? When I was six the main characters I recognized were Peter Rabbit and maybe Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, or perhaps E.T. Trilogies and sequels and mass marketing on the scale that they exist today didn't exist then-- not that they hadn't been invented, but it was a dry spell of big-budget sequels for kids between Star Wars and, well, the next three Star Wars. I'd like to think that were I six now I'd appreciate Jack Sparrow's eyeliner, but I had to settle for the Little Mermaid's seashell bra.

I feel like there has to be some limit of inundating our kids with the desire to own whatever mass-marketed character is out there, pressuring their parents to buy more and more junk while stifling creativity. But as the weather heats up and I get pumped for eating tons of popcorn in air conditioned theaters all summer, I can't really see much wrong with it. Time to shut my brain off and ride the Ferris Wheel of trademarked characters.